


the way things could've gone

by lucyprestons (leviosaphoenix)



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15872283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviosaphoenix/pseuds/lucyprestons
Summary: The Time Team meets Lucy’s college girlfriend, and Wyatt takes it SUPER well. Post 2x06-ish.AKA The Bisexual Lucy Preston Fic Nobody (Okay, Laura & Maddie) Asked For. Title from Scar by Missy Higgins.





	the way things could've gone

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in April for my friends and wasn't ever going to post it, so it's a bit rough; however, I found it again while cleaning up old stories and decided it was worth putting out there. Hope you enjoy it.

It starts with longer visions, more intense, more frequent.

Jiya loses time daily, her eyes rolling back into her head as the team are forced to drop whatever they’re doing and catch her before she hits the floor. The symptoms only get worse after Jiya’s latest trip in the Lifeboat, and it’s the day that she sprains her wrist after a heavy fall in the bathroom that Agent Christopher puts her foot down, gathering all the bunker’s residents in the briefing room for a lecture.

“Jiya, I understand that you don’t want to see a doctor, but you are endangering yourself and my team by refusing to seek treatment.”

Wyatt glances uncomfortably away, and catches Lucy doing the same. She meets his eyes for a moment before lowering her gaze, and the knot in Wyatt’s stomach pulls tighter.

“I would expect the same of any of you. This mission is too dangerous to have any of you in the field in sub-optimal condition. I’m placing Jiya on indefinite medical leave until the episodes stop.”

“What if they never stop?” Jiya demands, shrugging off Rufus’ attempt at a reassuring shoulder squeeze. “Or what if they’re important? What if I’m seeing these things for a reason?”

“I will not compromise your safety, and that’s final.” Denise fixes a glare on each of them in turn, daring them to contradict her.

“Like we’re just going to find a neurologist who’ll believe in _time travel_ anyway,” Jiya mumbles darkly.

“Actually, I might know someone.”

Wyatt spins to look at Lucy, who had whispered the words under her breath. She’s been distant lately, rarely speaking unless she’s asked a question. He knows it’s his fault, and his guilt grows exponentially when he sees the dark circles under her eyes or the mascara-stained tissues in her trashcan.

“You know a neurologist,” Denise states, then her eyes light up in recognition as she begins to flick through her tablet.

“A friend. An… an ex, really,” Lucy admits, cringing. “It’s in my file.”

“You want to tell your ex about what we do?” Wyatt asks, skeptically.

“Why not?” Lucy fires back. “You brought Jessica here. No offense,” she says, throwing Jess a careful smile that says volumes about her selflessness and determination to accept the bunker’s newest tenant.

“None taken,” Jess answers with a wink.

“Well, I suppose a neurologist is consistent with your type,” Rufus remarks. “With Noah and all.” Wyatt grits his teeth at these words, even as the logical part of him points out that he has no right to be jealous of anyone Lucy dates, past or present day included.

“As riveting as this discussion of Lucy’s former lover is,” Flynn says lazily, speaking up for the first time, “I don’t see why I need to be involved in it.”

There’s a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye, as if he knows something more than any of the others, and Wyatt wonders, not for the first time, if there’s anything about Lucy’s romantic relationships in her journal from the future.

“For once, Flynn is right. You’re all dismissed. Jiya, you’re on bedrest; Lucy, you’re with me. We’ll need to do some research on Dr. Winter and organize a team to retrieve her,” Denise says, motioning for Lucy to follow her out.

Like a sucker punch to the stomach, the words leave Wyatt speechless. Rufus opens and closes his mouth a few times, and Jessica lifts her eyebrows in mild surprise.

“Her?” Wyatt finally manages to say, his voice a little higher than usual, and Jiya laughs at his expression, her earlier bad mood melting away.

“Apparently,” Rufus says, wonderingly, “we’re about to meet Lucy’s ex-girlfriend.”

* * *

The woman sitting hunched at the table in their briefing room is petite, with dark blonde hair hanging just past her shoulders. Wyatt watches Lucy pace back and forth in front of the door, her brow furrowed in thought.

She’s said nothing to them since this revelation about her past, avoiding eye contact entirely, but her chin is held high in a silent challenge.

Of course, he really _feels_ like he should have known.

“Hedy Lamarr,” Rufus had hissed at him earlier, before Jess had caught them gossiping and he’d been forced to change the subject.

Flynn had been maddeningly smug about the entire thing, all but confirming that the esteemed Dr. Ava Winter was indeed mentioned in Lucy’s journal, and Jiya had been vague at first, finally caving and admitting that Lucy had confided she was bisexual somewhat recently after a night of too much wine.

At last, Lucy stops her pacing, taking a deep breath and marching into the room. The doctor lifts her head, then launches to her feet with a relieved smile.

“Lucy! What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“Hi, Ava. It’s been a while.”

The two hug briefly, and Wyatt notes that Lucy is just a shade taller.

“It’s been a while? You’re not normally one for clichés,” Ava remarks. “Care to tell me why six guys with guns showed up on my doorstep at four in the afternoon?”

“You might want to sit down,” is all Lucy says, and Ava tilts her head in amusement.

“Am I in some sort of bad spy movie?”

“I’m part of a top-secret project with Homeland Security. We need your help.”

There’s a pause where Wyatt knows that Ava is waiting for a punchline that won’t come.

“Okay,” she says, at last. “What kind of help?”

“One of the team has experienced some neurological side effects from our… work.”

Wyatt recognizes the same eager spark of interest in Ava’s eye as when someone mentions history to Lucy, the same immediate drive to solve a problem, to find an answer.

“Side effects?” she echoes.

“Seizures. Hallucinations.”

“And do I get to ask what kind of work you do, or is that classified?”

Lucy sighs. “It is classified, but it’s also important to your diagnosis. That’s why we had to find a leading neurologist who could be trusted with this kind of information.”

Slowly, finally, the blonde takes a seat, and Lucy follows her lead.

“Last I heard, you were teaching at Stanford,” Ava says. “You’re being serious, aren’t you? This isn’t some sort of joke to get me back for the way things ended?”

For the first time, Lucy tenses, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the mirror behind which she knows Wyatt is watching this entire interaction.

“Not a joke,” Lucy answers, keeping her voice light. “I was recruited because of my expertise in history. It’s somewhat essential to my position.”

“Which is?”

Lucy pauses, and Wyatt finds himself holding his breath.

“We’re time travellers. To be more specific, we’re in pursuit of a time travelling terrorist organization that wants to take over the world, but you don’t really need the details. What you _do_ need to know is that we brought one too many people in our time machine, and ever since, she has been having inexplicable visions of the future, with accompanying seizures. We hope you might be able to do something about that.”

Lucy’s words come out in a rush, and when she’s done speaking, she stares at Ava expectantly.

“Oh, good. So it’s nothing crazy, then,” Ava says, dryly.

The answering laugh that comes out of Lucy is joyful, unrestrained, and Wyatt has missed hearing it. A sickening envy grips him at the thought that that sound could be meant for anyone other than him.

“I knew you’d be the right person to ask,” Lucy says, warmly, reaching across the table to touch Ava’s arm.

“I have a lot of questions, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to need someone more science-minded to answer them.”

“Rufus,” Lucy says. “Our pilot is named Rufus.”

“Pilot,” Ava repeats with a grin. “Which makes you, what, the navigator?”

“I guess. And Wyatt,” she says, and the man in question wonders if he imagines the slight hitch in her voice on his name. “He’s our muscle.”

“And the patient?”

“Jiya. I can take you to meet her now?”

“Sounds good. Lucy?”

Lucy hesitates, apprehensive.

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to see you.”

“You, too.”

Wyatt watches in silence as the two women exit, and Lucy throws him only a cursory glance before she leads the way to the girls’ quarters.

All logic reminds him that he has Jessica now, and he needs to just let her go.

After all, it’s none of his business if Lucy wants to direct her brilliant smile at someone else.

* * *

Ava is perfect.

She’s whip-smart, an expert in her field, beautiful, funny, and an even match to Lucy in every way. Within moments of speaking to her, it seems like she’s won over everyone else in the bunker, including a gruff, reluctant Flynn. She understands the technology behind the Lifeboat in ways Wyatt could never hope to, volleying complicated questions and Star Wars references with Rufus in the same breath. She makes them all laugh with stories from their college days, none laughing louder than Lucy herself.

It irks him.

“Sci-fi and fantasy was kind of my thing,” Ava confesses. “I put Lucy through so many torturous movie nights and, oh, remember the time I made you join our Dungeons and Dragons game? I’m surprised you didn’t break up with me then and there.”

“I liked _regular_ board games,” Lucy sighs good-naturedly, as the others laugh. “I didn’t realize it wasn’t the same thing.”

The whole exchange leaves an unpleasant taste in Wyatt’s mouth, so he makes an excuse to leave and spend some time with Jess, refusing to acknowledge that being with his wife needed to be an excuse in the first place.

It’s later that night when he can’t sleep that he finds himself in the kitchen reheating leftovers, and the soldier in him senses he has company before he even turns.

“Sorry, I heard someone moving around. Thought it might be Lucy. I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, it’s okay,” Wyatt finds himself telling her, even as the thought of making small talk with Ava twists that same ball of knots in his stomach.

She sits at the table, watching him with careful brown eyes that almost seem like they’re peeling away his armor.

“Why don’t you like me, Wyatt?”

_Of course I like you,_ he tries to say. _What are you talking about?_ Something, anything would be better than staring at her blankly with his mouth hanging slightly open.

“I’m probably going to be around for a while, at least until Jiya starts to get better, so we should get this all out in the open before it becomes a problem. Is it because of Lucy?”

“No,” he says, unconvincingly. “I… Lucy…”

“I know, she told me. ‘It’s complicated. He’s got a wife now because time travel made things all topsy-turvy. It’s over.’ I guess it just doesn’t _look_ over to me, that’s all.”

Wyatt continues to stare at her, his mind completely blank, unable to say any of the things he definitely should be saying.

“Sorry, it’s not my place,” Ava says, relenting. “We can talk about something else. Tea?”

He shakes his head as she gets up to make herself a cup, brewing it exactly the way Lucy takes hers, something that he doubts to be a coincidence.

“How did you know Lucy was telling the truth about time travel?” He had been turning the question over in his mind, wondering how Ava had so readily accepted what she had been told.

Her smile ticks up at the corner of her mouth.

“Because she’s Lucy,” she answers, simply. “She doesn’t lie, not about things like that. When it comes to how she really feels, though, _that’s_ when she hides things.”

Unbidden, his thoughts stray to that phone call, the one after he’d found Jess again, where Lucy had promised him she would be okay, that she was thrilled for him, and he hates himself for being so eager to believe her that he’d overlooked the truth.

“Can I ask why you and Lucy didn’t work out? You seem… well-matched,” he remarks, trying unsuccessfully to mask the bitterness in his voice.

“If there was one thing I learned about her, it was that nothing mattered more than her career. She was always too afraid of losing it all to put a toe out of line, to go against what she was told to do. She was scared to tell her mom about us, even after two years together, because dating somebody would be considered an unwelcome distraction. She spent so much time studying that I felt like I barely ever saw her, and I went to one too many parties alone. So I backed off, told her I needed some time and she needed to figure out what she really wanted. I didn’t hear from her after that.”

Again, he remembers how Lucy had covered for him when he’d gone after Jess’s killer, or how she’d vowed to save all the accused women in Salem despite the fact that history had once known otherwise, or how she had slipped him a paperclip while distracting a security guard so he could lose his handcuffs and steal a car.

“That sounds like it was hard,” he manages to say, and she gives him a rueful smile.

“It was, at first. But I realized a long time ago that she and I were never fated to be more than friends. I know her, and I know that if she really loves someone, she puts them first, before her career, before everything, even herself. Someone like that? Well, they’d be an idiot to let her get away.”

Ava finishes her tea, washing up the mug and seemingly oblivious to the dumbstruck man and the half-eaten, now-cold bowl of food in front of him.

“Goodnight, Wyatt,” she says, softly.

“Night,” he echoes.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there in that cold, poorly lit kitchen, but by the time he returns to his bunk, he knows he doesn’t have a reason to hate Ava anymore.

In fact, with the haze of jealousy lifted, he actually kind of _likes_ her.

Somehow, that makes it all the more infuriating.


End file.
